Dear Editors,

I was glancing through the magazines in the University Hospital and ran across yours, half-way hidden under a pile of Cosmopolitans. I noticed that you are asking for letters from your readers, and since I read that much I thought I'd write you one.

To be honest, I liked the Cosmo issues a lot more than your magazine. They have way better models than you do (don't forget the photoshopping!) and their content is just so much more relevant to my daily life than yours. I was able to flip through your entire magazine in less than 4 seconds—there's just nothing to catch the eye.

So I want to suggest that you take a page out of the Cosmo play book and think a little bit more about what your readers will actually enjoy looking at. Get some decent pictures of attractive people, and you might stand half a chance with the public.

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Dear Bill,

Cosmo may appeal to some of our readers, but our philosophy is that Cosmo-style makeup can be liberally applied to syntactic diagrams, but constitutes cruelty when slathered on human faces.

Do yourself a favor: jog down to your local university and enroll in The sociolinguistics of the popular press, or whatever they teach in that vein. We think you'll appreciate the non-visible change your head experiences.

Dear August Editors,

We be writing with a credible proposal to shape English for the better. It bes confusing and unwarranted that three verbs as common as to go, to be and to have be irregular. Therefore, from now on, please inform all English speakers that:

• he/she/it has bes now he/she/it haves
• went bes now goed (as any child knows) and
• to be bes now:
  • I be
  • you be
  • he/she/it bes
  • they be

Now, that bes better, besn’t it?

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Dear Youse:

This is utterly unacceptable. If this reform were to be adopted, then the Bee Gees would suddenly be equated with Jesus, which is blasphemous, repulsive, and remarkably bad theology.

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Speculative Grammarian accepts well-written letters commenting on specific articles that appear in this journal or discussing the field of linguistics in general. We also accept poorly-written letters that ramble pointlessly. We reserve the right to ridicule the poorly-written ones and publish the well-written ones... or vice versa, at our discretion.

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